quaelin / idea

idea

idea is a suite of tools for interacting with the Idea-DAG.

It is intended as a foundational technology for applications dealing with fact verification, fuzzy logic, beliefs, agreement, preferences, argumentation/discourse, etc.

It uses IPFS, meaning data goes into a global, decentralized and content-addressable storage network. You'll need to have an IPFS daemon running locally for it to work.

Install the whole suite via npm:

$ npm i -g @quaelin/idea

Or else have a look in packages/ and install just components you need.

Concepts

Idea: an immutable text document asserting an idea, thought or statement of fact. Identifiable by its unique IPFS cid, which we refer to as an iCid.

Using the CLI tools:

$ idea add "Grass is green"
QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC

The idea "Grass is green" has been stored in IPFS, and its unique iCid was returned. It can be fetched by anyone who has the iCid:

$ idea get QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC
Grass is green

Relation: an Idea subtype that, instead of containing free text, asserts a logical or otherwise meaningful relationship between other iCids. There are numerous types of Relations, the simplest being "Negation".

$ relation R:Negation A=QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC
QmXTAPeuEEtuonUQy16pdc9VakSJufeg3BwcPyhevURrzW

The above is asserting an idea that is the logical negation of "Grass is green". Relations have a JSON representation that makes them easier to work with:

$ idea get QmXTAPeuEEtuonUQy16pdc9VakSJufeg3BwcPyhevURrzW
{"Relation":"Negation","A":"QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC"}

Perspective: a hash of iCids to valuations, representing a point of view with respect to the veracity of the Ideas represented. Identifiable by a unique pCid.

The valuations are floating point numbers in the range [-1, 1], where 1 means total agreement, -1 means total disagreement, and 0 is neutral.

A Perspective can easily be created by providing one or more iCid:valuation pairs:

$ perspective merge QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC=0.5
QmfLkCRRR8FViV2i59FbGjxx8UV65AkD8sXXwkxRZRQK6G

This is ascribing a valuation of 0.5 (indicating partial agreement) to the idea "Grass is green". The resulting Perspective (with only 1 iCid:valuation pair) can be identified by its unique ID:

$ perspective get QmfLkCRRR8FViV2i59FbGjxx8UV65AkD8sXXwkxRZRQK6G
{
  "QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC": 0.5
}

Although Perspectives are immutable, there are convenient ways to augment or combine them into new Perspectives.

$ idea add "Cows eat grass"
Qma8LMQ92Audtnc2jnRWy7uXo3X6Z1whQjR9v4eBqcdyBf

$ perspective merge QmfLkCRRR8FViV2i59FbGjxx8UV65AkD8sXXwkxRZRQK6G Qma8LMQ92Audtnc2jnRWy7uXo3X6Z1whQjR9v4eBqcdyBf=1
QmbRJAZa5yzRgAeFWDFaWjQ9zjDCaM81uiCXz5Zm2cDW4F

$ perspective get QmbRJAZa5yzRgAeFWDFaWjQ9zjDCaM81uiCXz5Zm2cDW4F
{
  "QmQ5yJw5nW3D5zyt9xJcJ9wiKA7vreborfrvRxyVsaT9zC": 0.5,
  "Qma8LMQ92Audtnc2jnRWy7uXo3X6Z1whQjR9v4eBqcdyBf": 1
}

Here we have started with one Perspective, and used it as a base while adding additional idea valuations to it to generate a new Perspective.